After the Ottoman
conquest of Trebizond Empire and later
Ottoman invasion of Guria in 1547, Laz populated area known as
Lazia became its own distinctive area (
sanjak) as part of
eyalet of
Trabzon, under the administration of a Governor who governed from the town of Rizaion (
Rize). His title was "
Lazistan Mutasserif"; in other words "
Governor of Lazistan". The Lazistan sanjak was divided into
kazas, namely those of:
Ofi,
Rizaion,
Athena,
Hopa,
Gonia and
Batum. Not only the
Pashas (governors) of Trabzon until the 19th century, but real authority in many of the
kaza (districts) of each sanjak by the mid-17th century lay in the hands of relatively independent native Laz
derebeys ("valley-lords"), or feudal chiefs who exercised absolute authority in their own districts, carried on petty warfare with each other, did not owe allegiance to a superior and never paid contributions to the sultan. This state of insubordination was not really broken until the assertion of Ottoman authority during the reforms of the
Osman Pasha in 1850s. In 1547, Ottomans acquired the coastal fortress of
Gonia, which served as capital of Lazistan; then
Batum until it was acquired by the Russians in 1878, throughout the
Russo-Turkish War, thereafter,
Rize became the capital of the sanjak. The Muslim Lazs living near the war zones in
Batumi Oblast were subjected to ethnic cleansing; many Lazes living in Batumi fled to the Ottoman Empire, settling along the southern Black Sea coast to the east of
Samsun and
Marmara region. Around 1914 Ottoman policy towards the Christian population shifted; state policy was since focused to the forceful migration of Christian
Pontic Greek and Laz population living in coastal areas to the Anatolian hinterland. In the 1920s Christian population of the
Pontus were expelled to
Greece. In 1917, after the
Russian Revolution, Lazs became citizens of
Democratic Republic of Georgia, and eventually became
Soviet citizens after the
Red Army invasion of Georgia in 1921. Simultaneously, a
treaty of friendship was signed in Moscow between
Soviet Russia and the
Grand National Assembly of Turkey, whereby southern portions of former
Batum Oblast - later known as
Artvin, was awarded to Turkey, which renounced its claims to Batumi. The autonomous Lazistan sanjak existed until the end of the empire in 1923. The designation of the term of Lazistan was officially banned in 1926, by the
Kemalists. Lazistan was divided between
Rize and Artvin provinces. == Population ==